How Google hid 15 years of internal communications to avoid antitrust
In order to evade legal scrutiny over anti-trust issues, a report from the New York Times claims that Google deliberately limited its internal documentation for 15 years, telling staff members to steer clear of speculative or casual language and setting messaging apps to automatically purge chats.
The company allegedly began using these tactics in 2008 after coming under antitrust investigation for an advertising agreement with Yahoo, its then-rival, sending a private note to its employees to delete text message evidence and refrain from using certain terms in internal messages that may be used as evidence in court.
In the United States, regulations require businesses who are facing legal action to keep their records safe. According to the NY Times report, Google’s internal communication system was altered to make deletion the default setting, leaving it up to the employees who might be under legal scrutiny to choose whether or not to keep their conversation history intact.
According to the report, it urged staff members to apply “attorney-client privileged” to papers and to always include a Google lawyer on the list of recipients, even in cases when there were no legal issues and the lawyer never replied.
“How Google developed this distrustful culture was pieced together from hundreds of documents and exhibits, as well as witness testimony, in three antitrust trials against the Silicon Valley company over the last year,” noted the report.
The US Department of Justice has lately begun to investigate Google and is allegedly preparing major actions to challenge the tech giant’s dominance in internet search and digital advertising, including demanding the company to sell its Chrome internet browser and unbundle Google services from Android.
“We have for years responded to inquiries and litigation, and we educate our employees about legal privilege,” the company stated in response, adding that it sought to provide the government records, and the Justice Department failed to show that “deleted” chats were essential to their case.
